MLK gets a holiday January 15, 1985
They’ve given Martin Luther King, Jr. a day of his own.
How queer this “give and take” of theirs is, handing blacks
a legend while stealing their roots.
I suppose this partly covers my own attitude at work lately,
locked into competition between races, a breeding ground for racism that
becomes most obvious when you listen to Mickey or Big John, the weekend guards.
There is an implied violence in their talk that makes me
uncomfortable, and against women as well.
I’m seen as a villain whenever I complain about the mess people
like Todd (who happens to be black) leaves the place when I take up my shift.
Todd as a way of working his way out of work, seeing this
place as somewhere he comes to and goes from, and gets paid for, but won’t take
responsibility for anything that happens while he is here.
Pete is the same way, only he’s white – so it’s not really a
matter of race.
Michele and her brother, Paul, tend to make it hard for
other people to work as well.
Michele used to close the store at night, one of Steve’s
innovations, or one of the two Waynes (managers) only she doesn’t do it. The
place hasn’t been cleaned property since Tony left last August.
I don’t exactly blame Michele. Steven won’t pay her the proper
wage for a responsibility that should be a manger’s.
I used to come in and find my table covered with stuff left
over from the day crew, stuff like soup containers and muffin pans, spoons,
even cigarette ashes – an assortment of junk I had to clean up before I could
start my own work.
The same problem with Mickey and the finishing table since I
am also finishing these days, doubling the amount of work I do, and do not get
paid for.
Michele does a lot of the work in the back herself. She doesn’t
know how to delegate duties. Another woman who worked for Gene last spring had
the same problem, the number one cause of burnout.
Even though I know it’s not Michele’s fault, I got angry at
her. She eventually resigned her night duties. Herbert, who replaced her, had
many of the same issues, an underpaid black man who knew as little about being
boss as Michele, and paid as little – and wound up doing much of the work, even
work the porters were supposed to do because the porters, always in a hurry to
leave, did as little as they needed to do. With the front (sales area) also
understaffed, overworked workers there began to quit, leaving Herbert to do
that as well.
Todd, one of the porters, has exactly the attitude of
someone who believes he isn’t getting paid was he’s worth, mumbling something
about not being anybody’s slave. Fast food places often hire people like him,
then work them to death until they quick, then hire someone else. It’s cheaper
to hire new people than it is to pay them what they are truly worth.
Still, I’m appalled by their lack of caring.
Of course, it’s unfair for me to compare myself to them.
I AM getting paid decently for my work. I have Steve over a
barrel; they do not. Yet, I get angry at their lack of dedication.
For instance, Pete (Heavy Pet who recently quit) once talked
to be about a literary story “A&P’ I had talked to him about. He just didn’t
understand why the main character quit.
Only later after Pete resigned did I understand his inability to stand
up to the boss. I was much the same at his age. Perhaps I didn’t understand
this when we spoke about the story.
I guess I’m nostalgia for the old place and old people who
used to work here under conditions when people still took pride in their jobs.
Phil, as greedy a weasel as he was, seemed to inspire love
in most of his employees and a respected the fact that good employees made him
more money in the end. Steve doesn’t get it, nor did any of the owners after
Phil left. Steve is too cheap to hire a night time manager to watch over the
employees.
It is remarkable that they even do as much work as they do considering
how much more massive their work load is compared to the morning staff – which is
significantly larger.
Since most of the staff is black, the whole thing has the
feel of pre-civil war plantation, and I think at the end of his life, Martin
Luther King, Jr. understood how little has changed over the previous century,
and that a wage slave is still essentially a slave.
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